Sploosh

 

ohhhh she is beautiful!

 

As couple of others said, you have to have paint correction even on our new cars to level paint/clearcoat (IE: our some to awful Orange Peel). You can have your car detailed 6 times a year or wax or whatever & you will not come close to getting the paint fixed & coated. Wax will not hide uneven paint application. Park your car in a dark garage then grab a small bright LED flashlite, hold it 90* to the paint & slowly move over the car. You will see slightly distorted to crappy distortion, by that I mean it will not be a mirror finish reflecting a perfect reflection of the light. Also, even the detail shops by & large do not protect your paint when using dirty water, rags, & too much pressure rubbing in all directions instead of light-back & forth in one direction to lessen swirl marks. They are in the business of volume, time is money. I have seen on here pics & in person cars with a GREAT paint correction/coating & you will be amazed at how crystal clear the reflection of clouds, tree limbs/leaves, even the texture of your driveway reflected in a properly done car. It cannot be done with detail/wax until paint corrected. I am not associated with any detail/coating company but had my car 12 months & got tired of seeing absolutely drop dead gorgeous cars that had this done & finally bit the bullet & got'r done myself. Check out the blue vette in this thread!

 

Shop recommendations in the Southern Maryland area??

 

Does ceramic coating offer any protection from rock chips? I am trying to decide between ceramic coating and xpel. Have a new 2018 GS coming soon.

 

Does not protect against rock chips. Xpel will in most cases.

 

Absolutely no. Clearcoat is about 35-50 microns, opti-pro with one coat about 2 microns, wax only .02 microns, but nowhere as thick as Xpel (8.5 mils/215 microns!).

 

Looks awesome... I just can't get over the price, but many of my friends think it's worth it.

 

On another thread, I was encouraged to apply the Ceramic Pro coating myself. Like others have stated, the price is hard to swallow. In my area it's close to $2,000. Can anyone suggest a good, mild, polish to correct any swirls before I apply the coating on my newly arriving 2019 Grand Sport. The Ceramic Pro kit is $59, a good dual action polisher is about $200 and being retired, I have the time. Also if you think I'm nuts trying to do this on my own, don't hesitate to say so.

 

This is what I use (it's made by 3D products) for removing minor imperfections and it also leaves behind a nice shine too:

 

JMHO, the paint correction is the end all to a perfect coating result. If you don't have lots of experience correcting paint I would not do it. You probably will either be too scared to get the paint all over the car even (knocking off the high spots) or get too aggressive & perhaps take off clearcoat in areas. There are a lot of tricky spots(curves/breaks in the body/sharp lines, etc.) where it is difficult to keep the polisher perfectly perpendicular to the paint. I know a bunch of folks will say "it's a piece of cake, just do it" but in my opinion it really needs to be perfect all over, not just the easy flat spots on the body. Also the products available to the public are not the same products that are only available to licensed shops (such as CQuartz Professional/Finest) of some of these products (read BEST/HARDEST/LONGEST LASTING). There is an intense amount of labor getting the paint perfect & that's why the shops charge so much. You should at least look into having "professionals" who do paint correction for a living to do your correction, then if you want, MAYBE try the coating. Do not use a generic detail shop for any of this! Each of us must know our limits, our 70-100K cars are not the place to learn this procedure. I usually know my limits & when to pay the professionals. I've done the Mamo PTB, X-pipe, brakes, MGW shifter, skip shift install, etc. But I am fixing to have the paint correction/CQuartz done soon as we get stretch of warmer weather since I drive 130 miles to the shop doing mine. Again, just my opinion, I'm sure some will hate on me, call me a wuss,etc.

 

Since I special ordered my car and knew that it would never look as good as it did when first/originally painted, I decided to protect as much of the car's exterior to the best of my ability to keep it looking as new as possible for as long as possible. The list of what I had done is seen below.



Because I knew that my car's paint (at the time I took possession) was only 2+ weeks old I knew that the paint hadn't finished curing yet. I also know that scratches and swirls can be introduced when the dealer preps (washes) the car and since I didn't want any scratches or swirls under the paint protection film (PPF) and ceramic coating I made sure that my dealer, service manager, and everyone knew that my car was not to be cleaned, washed, touched, prepped, etc.

Because the car came with a cover on it and because the dealership needed to install the side skirts and front splitter, the dealership did have to lift the cover a little bit in order to install the side skirts and front splitter. Aside from that, the car essentially rolled off the Corvette trailer into the dealership where they installed the side skirts and front splitter and then rolled onto another trailer for delivery to my place where the car sat for a few more weeks to let the paint finish curing (as recommended directly from Corvette).
The transport cover. Paint curing in a relatively dust-free environment.
Once the paint finished doing what it needed to do then I took it to a shop for maximum exterior protection (listed above). I get comments all the time about how shiny and glossy it looks (even when it's not the cleanest that it could be). I even had one company ask me to take photos of their product being used with my car.
Pictured here with FlatStoppers from Race Ramps.
I'm a detail guy. I get excited when I see a 1975 Ford Limited station wagon (with the fake wood paneling on the sides) that is in great shape. Not because the car is a great car but because someone did a great job keeping it in such great shape for all those years. I know I'm simply the first owner of this vehicle and some day the next owner will appreciate the care that was taken with this vehicle. For this reason primarily is why I see value in things like ceramic coating and paint protection film. But before you go to the trouble of doing PPF and/or ceramic coating, make sure you do paint correction first to remove things like contaminants, scratches, swirls, etc. Otherwise, they'll be under the CC/PPF and not easily accessible once applied.

Hope this info helps.

 

^^THIS!!
I am NOT a body guy. I don't have a creative bone in my body. I'm horrible at washing cars (there's always that spot I miss) and I don't trust myself on this car waxing. I found a shop that does luxury cars and watched their process. 2 people on clay bar and paint correction (including any orange peal) for 2 days. Application of ceramic coating 1 day. Cure for 2 days. Result = colored mirror. Just fantastic. I'm also doing an 18" clear bra for protection. Call me paranoid or whatever, but this is my first Corvette and I'm gonna baby it for a minute or two.

 

 

No, I did that. I can't tell if you're making fun of me or being serious. Ha ha.

 

One last point. The new paint facility cars are supposed to be a whole lot better but the few posts I've seen still seem to be hit or miss. Paint consistency must be perfect, it has to have time to flow to even out but still harden quickly. Most posts I see say the vertical panels (sides/back) still have the most problem which makes perfect sense. Paint on a horizontal panel (hood/roof) doesn't have same gravity pull as vertical panels, so will be more even (w/o high/low spots). Here's a quick test, as I've stated on other threads. In your dark garage or nite outside, take a very bright LED lite & hold it 12-18" from the paint at 90* to surface. The lens part of the reflection should be a perfect mirror image (colored, yes, but perfect). If the lens reflection or halo is blurred & lite scatters then the paint needs fixed to be perfect. This can't be eyeballed, even the shops verify they have hit all panels evenly using this method. Even brand new cars are guilty of not perfect paint most times. It sorta is same principle on pouring concrete for garage floors, it has to be wet leveled, can't just pour & walk away. Check out DavidC83 post in Z06 forum to see what can be accomplished on his black car. Yes, it is a slightly used car with paint abused also but the absolute crystal clear image after is what I refer to.

 

 

 

The white is Cquartz Finest. This was several years ago. I now have a shark gray z06. Did the same with that one too.....CQuartz Finest Reserve.
I have an excellent guy for paint correction and ceramic coating in Charlotte, NC. His prices are in line with others.
It's not cheap, but it's well worth it.

PM me if you're interested in paint correction, ceramic coating, or both in Charlotte.

 

I have c-quartz andwould not do it again. I have a daily driver and see no real difference between it and my wife's car that I use zaino on.

if I had to spend over $800 again I would go with expel, at least it would have protected it from the several rock chips I now have that the coating did nothing for.

save the money and either go with expel or by $50 worth of Zaino products